Dr. Ioanna Semendeferi is an Associate Instructional & Research Professor at the Department of Physics in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Houston (UH). She has a B.S. degree (magna cum laude) in Physics from the Aristotle University in Greece. She got her Ph.D. in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota. She pursued ambitious archival research during her Ph.D. years with support from several foundations, including an NSF grant from the Science and Technology Studies Program. She worked for a time as a researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory investigating historical issues in environmental science.

Currently, her academic work and interests focus on science ethics and the social and human dimensions of science. Dr. Semendeferi was the architect of the ethics in science and the history of science courses at UH, where she has been teaching them since 2008. She developed the concept of “Experiencing Ethics” upon which the relevant NSF grant is based. She wrote, directed, and produced the film Dear Scientists-an innovative film on the scientists’ ethical and social responsibility. Her articles have mainly appeared in the Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Science and Engineering Ethics, Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, and Nature Physics.

Dr. Pavlidis is the Eckhard-Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science at UH. He is actively involved in ethics initiatives in the area of scientific publishing; a notable one was the introduction of the open review system, during his 2008 Program Chairmanship of the IEEE AVSS Conference. Dr. Pavlidis runs a major interdisciplinary lab and has a multi-disciplinary background that touches upon biomedicine, psychology, computing, and engineering. He has been the Principal Investigator (PI) in many research grants from NSF, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Dr. Pavlidis is also on the executive committees of several refereed conferences.